Viewers ditching live TV for recorded and online programs

LAS VEGAS – In TV land, viewing a show at the same time it was on the air used to be the only way to go, but the audience has now shifted to watching recorded or online video, according to research released Wednesday by TiVo.

Only 38 percent of viewers with Internet-connected TiVo units still watch shows live, while two-thirds of the viewing is done from a digital video recorder or other options like video on demand, TiVo officials said Wednesday here at the Consumer Electronics Show.

And only 27 percent of TiVo owners who also have access to online video services such as Netflix, YouTube and Hulu Plus still watch shows live.

The Alviso company gleaned those trends by tracking the viewing data from two million TiVo set top boxes.

Granted, those two million boxes represent only a subset of the overall TV viewership, but the data tracks along the lines of other research that has shown a clear shift in TV viewing habits in the digital age.

And the research findings bring “huge implications for commercial ad delivery, how consumer search and find programs and the role of networks in the carriage of shows,” said TiVo CEO Tom Rogers.

Not a surprise. Trends and interest have been pointing the way since the 90s. Cell phones gave us the ability to communicate practically anywhere and lead to the decline of traditional landlines Streaming is changing the way we entertain ourselves and traditional TV/cable is taking a beating.

What’s going to be the fly in the ointment is an internet infrastructure that is being allowed to stagnate. Rather than build out, iProviders are capping bandwidth in a misguided attempt to delay the need to increase capacity.

More to the point, just as the cost of electricity and water are relatively known quantities and we are charged reasonable rates for their consumption, bandwidth is going to have to be treated the same way. A bill that charges for base access plus a amount per gigabyte times gigabytes consumed can and will be the only way forward. Then and only then can providers be fairly compensated. Only then can consumers compare services and costs. Heavy users will pay more, occasional users will pay less. It’s only fair. It’s the only reasonable course.

I was trying to think back to the last time I watched something live, and I almost can’t. I couldn’t tell you when it was, or what it was – I only remember that it was painful waiting through the commercials and being tied to the TV because there wasn’t a DVR.

It’s certainly the wave of the future, but there is a very large population that either doesn’t have, or doesn’t want DVR or web streaming technology yet. Quite frankly, it’s still a luxury item.